Sadly, Medical leadership as it stands cannot be relied upon to lead the campaign to defend workers health interests. (I have lost count of the times I’ve been told by consultants that they have BUPA care.)
Only strong pressure from the organised working class can play this role. I hope this campaign will seek to embrace the broadest sections of the community possible. It is the only way to save Lewisham Hospital – and the NHS.
This article from a delegate to the 2010 Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland, makes it clear that any and all of the main political parties have a clear agenda to slash health spending by just these kind of measures: create an environment of impossible financial constraint (job done); claim hospitals are ‘financially failing’ (almost finished); and sack workers, close / privatise services (in progress), and ultimately leave us with only skeleton provision (now a matter of time – unless…)
Lalkar article from a delegate at the 2010 congress of the Association of Surgeons of Greaet Britain and Ireland – just before the General Election that brought the Con-Dem coalition in: http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2010/nhs.html
What sounded like scaremongering a decade ago – although the privatisation of hospital cleaners, the Hillingdon cleaners’ strike, etc. was in retrospect a clear chance to act that was ignored by most of us – is now almost a fait accomplis.
At what point do the BMJ, RCN, etc., decide it is our ethical duty to protect the lives of patients by protecting service provision – just as it is our duty to practise safe prescribing, or learn some relevant anatomy before performing an operation?
Our political ‘leaders’ have no such scruple. This is a time when the common sense and common decency of patients, workers and the local community must take the lead.
Show your support for the hardworking staff of Lewisham Hospital, and the support they give the hardworking, people of Lewisham, already struggling under the burden of the financial crisis: Join the Demo on 26 Jan
Red Youth and the CPGB-ML send our militant greetings to the Cuban 5, their families and fellow Cubans, and to progressive humanity world-wide fighting this unjust and barbaric system of capitalist imperialism, led by the bloodthirsty united States.
The USA proclaims itself to be the ‘land of the free’, but on closer inspection it is the most gross prison state and the universal violator of the rights of mankind, of all nations, and the working classes and oppressed masses of the world in particular.
The Cuban 5 speak for themselves:
“Today humanity is focused in that battle for its own survival. Our continent is awakening from a long nightmare imposed by the blood and fire of imperialism. The contradictions of capitalism are everyday more evident and acute…
“In any trench that we are we will honor your solidarity and trust.”
We re-produce the CPGB-ML’s invaluable leaflet on US human rights abuses, and an article explaining the background of the Cuban/Miami 5’s unjust incarceration and fight for liberty and repatriation here:
New Years Greeting reproduced, with thanks, via the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5:
Dear friends of the Cuban 5,
Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio and Fernando, send these holiday messages of solidarity to the Cuban people and to their friends around the world from their prisons and Rene from his unjust supervised probation.
———————————————————————————————————
Dear sisters and brothers,
This year 2012 is reaching an end and we want to use this special opportunity to express how proud and grateful we are for counting on your support, love and brotherhood.
Thanks to your presence, we never feel alone, we are strong and optimistic, you give us the reasons to believe in justice and freedom. You give us the certainty that one day we will get together to celebrate this victory, and together we will go on fighting for just causes all over the world!!
Thanks so much for your solidarity and love!
On behalf of the Cuban 5, our five families, and the Cuban people:
Marry Christmas!
Best wishes in the New Year!
Happiest 2013!!!!
Love and Peace!
Cartoon by Gerardo Hernández for the weekly newspaper Trabajadores
Dear friends,
Another year of intense solidarity with the cause of our liberation comes to an end. There have been countless actions, demonstrations, and tangible results from the work of all of you in different parts of the world.
We feel the strength of your solidarity. A few years ago our situation was almost unknown but today, thanks to you, and to your tireless work on this initiative, the information about the case of the Five has reached almost all corners of politics and society and has virtually reached the entire universe.
Much remains to be done. Not for lack of effort on your part, but because of the stubborn opposition and the obstacle that represents the powerful forces that collude to keep reality in the most absolute silence.
However, we are confident in the human quality of you, in your wisdom and commitment as activists, and in your inexhaustible spirit of solidarity. We know that we can count on you and that you will accompany us until together we will achieve our goal; our freedom and our return to the Homeland and our families.
Please accept in every city or town of the universe from which you give us your solidarity our most profound gratitude. Thank you very much for your support, many successes in 2013, and congratulations on the New Year.
Fernando González Llort
December 24, 2012
To our dear people and friends around the world,
Yesterday evening, while many here were watching television, I sat down to write a poem in my cell and that is how these verses were born. As this year ends, when people are accustomed to receiving special gifts, I want to give them to all of you, and especially my four brothers.
SIMPLE FREEDOM
Simple freedom, nourishment of dreams,
love of a single face visible in the surface of the moon.
Simple freedom, without bridle, without owners,
free likes no one.
Simple freedom, of the unnamed peak,
where night falls buried in his lance
Simple freedom, in which man cultivates
the magic hope.
Simple freedom, as a swallow
that insists to fly until it loses its winds.
Simple freedom, under the sky and the ruins,
surrounded by bullets.
Simple freedom, as springtime
singing to life, challenging death.
Simple freedom, fiction of a frontier
against bad luck.
Simple freedom, giving birth and repeating
streets, cities, houses, books, songs, struggles.
Simple freedom, with which you learn
that you have many weapons.
Simple freedom, oh, face of love!,
it seems that I saw you in the skin of the moon.
Simple freedom, sentiment and honor
that no one can take from you.
In the year of the 54th Anniversary of the Revolution and also the year we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, we move forward with indestructible unity and with full confidence in our revolution under the guidance and example of Fidel and Raul.
Congratulations, wishing you health, peace and success in your goals in 2013.
Five embraces.
¡Venceremos!
Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez
US Federal Prison, Marianna
December 25 , 2012
Dear friends,
Once again we are at the end of another year, forced to write to you from the punishment that paradoxically has brought us the support that today motivate these grateful words. It has been 14 years of unjust vengeance during which time the most powerful country on earth, with their usual arrogance, has made deaf ears to the outcry of you all.
For us it has been another year of this long and tiring struggle, but it also provides a reason to reaffirm ourselves. The future of humanity cannot stay in the hands of people with so much hatred. We either rise up over those who pretend to be the last human product of history, so as to put the future in the hands of the people; or not many generations will go on until stupidity and barbarism will manage to end it all.
Today humanity is focused in that battle for its own survival. Our continent is awakening from a long nightmare imposed by the blood and fire of imperialism. The contradictions of capitalism are everyday more evident and acute. Our people are working to do everything possible to build itself into such a more humane alternative, one that is truly democratic and sustainable, which has been a kind of utopia for humankind since it started its fight for justice. Our place is there with our people and also with all of you, who from your respective places work every day to build a better world that we all need, including for those who are trying to ignore it.
To all of you that during these years have supported us, giving us your encouragement and making us feel that we are not alone; we send our best wishes of happiness and success in the New Year.
We will continue counting on you. In any trench that we are we will honor your solidarity and trust.
Red Youth, standing shoulder to shoulder with our comrades in the Syrian Communist Youth Union reproduce the statement of the revolutionary Syrian youth who stand with the legitimate government of the Syrian people and the President Bashar al-Assad against the imperialist-backed forces of reaction and obscurantism.
Dear comrades and friends:
Nowadays, Syria is facing one of the most serious position in its modern history, when the world imperialist attack is increased using most reactionary forces with full support and funding of the Arab reactionary regimes who they are Imperialist agents.
Today the Syrian people and youth are facing the terrorist operations, massacres and incitement on the various components of the Syrian people, where the terrorist operations targeting civilians, soldiers, academics and active youth. These operations are carried out by terrorist groups and extremist reactionary forces especially its obscurantist Muslim Brotherhood organization with direct support by weapons and through media campaigns which are led, funded and fabricated by treason and reactionary Arab regimes especially oil Arab Gulf countries in addition to NATO interference in the region by Turkey. The treason forces who are called themselves ″The Syrian opposition″ are asking for external intervention on Syria by NATO, which means to invade our country depending upon the criminal imperialist model that we witnessed in Libya and Iraq, which means to allow NATO to invade and occupy Syria, this what the Syrian people and youth are against it and will fight it by all means and forms. In this occasion, the Syrian Communist Party and Syrian Communist Youth Union – Khaled Bagdash Youth have organized many demonstrations and sit-ins in various parts of Syria rejecting the imperialist interventions in the country affairs and supporting the Syrian national steadfastness, and our comrades is working in many region to relief and help the refugees.
Despite everything that is happening, the Syrian national steadfastness continues to face the Zionist and imperialist pressures and blackmails and still insists to restore the occupied Syrian Golan and rejecting imperialist domination plans such as the imperialist plan that so called “the new greater middle east”. This national steadfastness is the cornerstone in the victories which achieved by the national resistance in the East Mediterranean region. Syria is the stronghold facing the imperialist plans and projects in the region, and it is the main supporter to national resistance in the region, this caused it to won the hostility of imperialists, Zionists, reactionaries and their traitors.
But the neoliberal economic policies that have been applied in recent years led to impoverish the masses of people and led to increasing the unemployment status among young people and gave a strong blow to the national production, which create a breeding ground for the work and activities of reactionary forces, and established for the unfortunate events that taking place in the country. This is what Syrian communists have warned and struggled against everywhere and with various shapes.
Syrian Communist Youth Union – Khaled Bagdash Youth confirms the full commitment with the policy of Syrian Communist Party, which was adopted in his 11th Congress, and the essential orientations of the struggle of the Party in the current stage which was adopted in the last meeting of the Central Committee of the Party. As following:
1. Defending for the national independence and sovereignty, keeping back the imperialist plots and the attempts of Arab and local reactionary forces , and mobilizing the people mass under the great national slogan: “Syria will not Kneel down! “.
2. Struggling against the neo-liberal economic policies, with all its shapes and characters, defending for the national production and interests of producers, and proposing the tangible alternatives with confirming the general orientation, that adopted by th 11th congress of SCP about reinforcing the public sector and the interfering role of the state in the frame of national state capitalism that has a social character and tasks.
3. Defending firmly for the toiling popular mass and escalation the class struggle.
Dear comrades and friends:
The Syrian communist youth union – Khaled Bagdash youth struggles through the direct mass activity, demand petitions, trade unions, students union and through all fields of work and study to maintain the Syrian national steadfastness against the plans and conspiracies of imperialism, Zionism and reactionary Forces. And also against the neoliberal economic policies, to support the national production and to maintain the social rights of Syrian people and youth especially free education, free health care, and to find work opportunities, adequate housing of youth, to widen the democratic freedoms, and to achieve the students and workers youth demands.
Dear comrades:
Nowadays, when we are confronting the terrorist groups, massacres and sabotage actions that are organized by the mercenaries and supported by imperialism, we confirm our firm position:
No revolution with world imperialism. No revolution with NATO. No revolution with the reactionary regimes of mercenary and national treachery of rulers of gulf who steal the wealth of the people of Arab peninsula. No revolution with reactionary and treachery forces. Because a revolution that its first slogan is not the liberation of the land and face the imperialism and Zionism is not a revolution. A revolution who does not raise the banner of national independence and prevent external intervention is not a revolution.
We shall struggle against the terrorist groups and imperialist death machines, for independence and sovereignty, for the freedom of homeland and good life of people.
Our battle is long and hard, but we progress in the path of honorable struggle and we’ll win..
Homeland or Death!
Syrian Communist Youth Union
– Khaled Bagdash Youth-
A 14 year old cadre of Red Youth has written and posted the following letter to his school who have instituted an Amnesty International club for the students. Our comrade, in a short and precise letter exposes the sheer hypocrisy of AI and delivers a challenge to his school, peers and the local AI Club to justify their peddling of imperialist propaganda. The letter is reproduced exactly as it was composed save the name of the school and comrade:
“Dear TGS Amnesty International Club,
I am writing this letter in sheer disgust at the ignorance of xxxx Schools Amnesty International club portrays. Presentations were carried out throughout the school promoting the club and issuing out awareness material to other students. Students were intimidated into signing cards and letters expressing their support for the supposed ‘political prisoners’ locked up in certain nations across the world. The information given to the students about the prisoners was extremely limited and bias. However, my argument is for the millions of oppressed people across the world suffering at the behest of the rich and powerful nations on whose behalf A. I. operates and from where it is based. Why focus on a few individuals and then ignore all the crimes committed by these powerful states? I will be expressing points which will hopefully be answered by the group.
I have no doubt that Amnesty International contains a great number of well-meaning supporters, people with genuine compassion. It is from this standpoint that I express my outrage at the continual stream of lies, hypocrisy and war propaganda that emanates from publications and spokespersons of Amnesty International, hood-winking its members, volunteers and the general public alike into supporting acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing and regime change throughout the world.
We all remember the horrendous war on Libya which resulted in thousands of innocent civilians being killed, beautiful infrastructure being smashed (including the Sahara Aquifers) and blown up and a secular and progressive regime being expunged. And let’s not forget how we all witnessed the rape and lynching by mercenaries and foreign terrorists of the much loved Leader of that country, Colonel Gaddafi, on our computers, mobiles and television screens like some kind of sadistic game that would be familiar to see on horror films like Saw and Hostel. And which ‘Human Rights’ organization really pushed for regime change in that country? Of course, Amnesty International.
Now, several months on, cases are emerging of Libyan cities and towns such as Tawergha, Bani Waled and Sirte being persecuted and violently terrorised due to the fact that the majority of people living there were black. In one town, Tawergha, some 40,000 plus black people were force to flee in one day as they were butchered and terrorised by the rebel militias and gangs provided with NATO air cover. On the 25th February this year, a man was reported on the BBC news saying:
“We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company. They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Gaddafi.’ The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”
This is just one of the hundreds of cases being released clearly showing, with great and detailed evidence, that the rebels, supported by Amnesty International, NATO, etc, were human rights abusers on a massive scale. Surely that can’t be right? A Human Rights defender siding with NATO, a Military Alliance which has killed, massacred and terrorised millions in its time, to help bring about regime change for a handful of racist thugs. So exposed was the stance of Amnesty on the Libyan massacre that its spokesperson retracted her earlier statements about Gadaffi using foreign mercenaries to fight for him. However this confession of course was never broadcasted by the mass media which is in the service of this same NATO war machine. But the lies spouted at the time about the Libyan army were enough to provide the cover and false legitimacy for the NATO saturation bombing which brought the war lords and racist terrorist gangs to power and massacred thousands of Libyan troops and civilians. You might argue that this is just one lonely example which can’t prove anything but try telling millions of Libyans that. Moving on.
Now, the organisation has moved onto Syria, another target of the West. What a coincidence. Amnesty International is constantly promoting the rebels there (which have very close links to Al-Qaida and other Islamic extremist groups) to topple another progressive, developing and secular state. Their excuse, very much like the excuse they used in Libya, is that the President, Basher Al Assad, is a ‘dictator murdering his own people’. Is Assad just meant to let a group of local and foreign terrorists, funded and armed by real dictators in the region, namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain, to come and attack his people? And if Assad was such an evil tyrant with no desire but wealth and exploitation of his people, why would over 15 million Syrians, over 90% of the electorate, vote for his new reform plans earlier this year? The Bathe party in Syria heads a broad coalition of all the very many ethnic groups and confessions of the nation, defending them all against an array of extremist Sunni terrorist gangs seeking succour from rich and powerful foreign nations.
Many human rights abuses are being carried out slyly right here under our noses in Britain and other Western ‘democratic’ countries.
Many Muslim immigrants and asylum seekers, escaping from the very war zones created by western military interventions, are inhumanely harassed and molested as soon as they pass through the border crossings, on spurious claims of suspicion of terrorism or other crimes even though most are women and young children. They are made to live in very harsh conditions, including internment camps, insufficient for raising a family. They are given ill-paid jobs which require long hours of work for a minimum wage. They often resort to crime to survive, which lands them in jail.
Can it be just that 50% of the USA’s prison population is black, and that Native Americans have never been compensated for the massive genocide perpetrated against them? Can it be just that the US, the richest nation in the World, has a bigger prison population than any other country, both proportionately and absolutely? The American penal system incarcerated over 5 million of its citizens during the 1930’s and over 2.5 million today. Why were there no cards for these victims? Why were there no cards for today’s tens of millions of the descendents of tens of millions of African slaves who form the vast majority of the impoverished in the USA and to this day have no rights to medicare and many of whom end up languishing in the Jails of the USA?
Police brutality and oppression is a regular experience for black people in the US, as well as national minorities throughout Europe. Earlier last week, on December 13th, Chicago police killed 38 year old Phillip Coleman, who was, according to family members and neighbours, having a nervous breakdown and behaving erratically. Police subdued him with a taser when he was arrested and again after he arrived at Roseland Hospital. He died later on that day in Roseland. Phillip Coleman’s sister, Jacqueline, told the Sun-Times,
“Phillip was not treated justly, he was treated like an insect!”
This is just one example of the cruel acts the American state perpetrates on its own citizens, whilst claiming to be a father figure of democracy and freedom.
I recall that one of the cards which was given to us to sign, was for a prisoner in China called Chen Guangcheng, who was locked up for being too ‘outspoken’ in his beliefs. It is now reported that he has fled to the USA with his family. Say no more. However, my point is that even after all the evidence lying on the table, proving how the West, namely the USA and its puppets or lap dogs including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, etc commit the most atrocious crimes against humanity and act like ‘police of the world’, Amnesty International still points its longest finger at the People’s Republic of China for being an abuser of human rights. But as I already explained, it is the USA that has the largest prison population in the world, both absolutely and as a percentage of its population. Where’s the card for Bradley Manning? Wheres the card for Mumia Abu Jamal? Where’s the card for Julian Assange? Where are all the cards for the inmates of Guantanamo Bay? Where all the cards for the thousands of black people being imprisoned in America and being lynched in Libya as we speak by these supposed ‘Freedom Fighters’?
China is one of the two nations to veto a war on Syria at the UN Security council. It can see how regime change there will lead to a catastrophe even greater than the one in Libya. And for this reason and others it is attacked extensively by the West, using any means necessary, including Human Rights organisations like Amnesty International to pick out mole hills there and to make them into mountains.
At the Nuremburg Trials after World War 2, it was made very clear that the highest crime of all was an unprovoked war waged by one country against another. For good reason you might say. There can be no greater denial of human rights than War itself: millions are terrorised, displaced, killed violently or by secondary causes, wrongfully imprisoned, denied the means of sustenance and any security. Yet it is Western countries that have been the main instigators and protagonists of these wars yet all the claimed justifications for them from holding WMD’s to humanitarian intervention, stopping massacres, fighting terrorism, supporting democracy, removing dictators, protecting women, fighting drugs etc etc etc etc have all been exposed to progressive humanity as massive lies: Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, Libya, Syria, the Congo are the most well known and deadly. Where are the cards for the millions of the victims of these wars, the millions who have been denied the most basic human rights of all? To Life? To Peace? To Security? To a Home? To Food? To the very basic needs for sustaining life? Surely, if Amnesty International was a real fighter for human rights these matters would be at the top of the agenda and determine the cards we would be signing? Instead, so as to prepare the unsuspecting public for the next criminal war, it selectively chooses only the countries to be targeted, demonising their systems so that the public at worse will turn their heads the other way after the start of the military aggression. It is no surprise therefore that the “human rights” victims highlighted by A. I. are those working under the auspices of Western powers, selling out their countries’ independence to them. However, in the West we have no qualms about locking up and throwing away the key in those cases of betrayal to foreign countries.
As a student who researches extensively on world events trying to see society’s big picture, I cannot help but be infuriated at how openly supporters of Amnesty International operate within the school community, spreading bias propaganda and promoting ill-minded teachings, without being adequately challenged. They ignore the fact that A.I. promotes a cruel system, providing it with the legitimacy required for its criminal wars, global economic inequality and for the exploitation of 99% of world’s people. Surely the largest denial of human rights is that over 2 billion people (1/3 of the world’s population) have to survive on less than $2 a day? As a consequence the World health Organisation has stated that over 5 million children below the age of 5 die every year from malnutrition alone. Where are the cards for these lost souls?
I really do hope you can come back on the points I have raised.
We publish here a number of important documents and materials relating to Korea and the life of Comrade Kim Jong Il as our way of marking the anniversary of his death last year.
Pyongyang, December 18 (KCNA) — A floral basket was sent to the statues of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) on the occasion of the first anniversary of demise of Kim Jong Il.
The floral basket was laid before the statues on Tuesday.”
Pyongyang, December 19 (KCNA) — A detailed gist of leader Kim Jong Il’s work “Abuses of Socialism Are Intolerable” was carried by the No. 4 issue of the Swedish magazine “Korean Information”.
The magazine in its preface said that General Secretary Kim Jong Il in his work published on March 1, 1993 scientifically proved that the imperialists and reactionaries’ accusation that socialism is “totalitarian,” “barracks-like” and “administrative and commanding” is sheer sophism and clarified the scientific accuracy of socialism, inevitability of its victory and ways for dynamically advancing the cause of socialism.”
Reflections on the tragic death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha, the media’s attempts to blame to hapless Australian DJ’s for the death, and Morrissey’s insistence that blame lies rather with Kate Middleton and the Windsor family.
The moment i heard about the prank i thought “Oh God, the hospital will clearly now fire the poor nurse who they will deem responsible for what they will see as an unacceptable breach of client confidentiality”. The next thing, i hear the poor nurse has indeed killed herself. It now seems with the revelations from her suicide note that things probably did unfold as i for one had suspected they would.
What this whole sorry tale speaks of more than anything else is the rotten culture of corporate bullying in this country. The hospital will have gone to town on the nurse because they will have prized their reputation for being able to maintain the confidentiality of their rich prestigious layabout clients way way way ahead of the welfare of their skilled hardworking staff, whom they will view as being no better than vermin and completely expendable.
Blame, therefore, lies with this rotten system that grovels around the rich and views working class people simply as resources to be exploited. If we’re talking about guilty parties in this tragic tale, it therefore pretty common-sensically falls with richest and most powerful first:
1. The royals themselves – for even existing. This band of pampered talentless selfish unfeeling parasites have bled the people of this country and this world dry for too long. If they and the system of extreme inequality over which they preside did not exist, Jacintha Saldanha would highly likely still be alive today.
2. The scumbag corporate media – who, like the snivelling slimeball toads they are, blamed the nurse after the prank, and then backtracked and pretended they cared about her after they found out she had then hanged herself, now instead blaming the Aussie pranksters who quite frankly were peripheral characters in the story. As usual the media scumbags, throughout the whole affair, applied their standard principle of blaming the poorest and weakest, and bending over backwards to protect the rich and powerful: the royals, the hospital, and most of all themselves. Utterly shameless.
3. The disgraceful hospital corporate management, who likely effectively sacrificed the life of one of their own highly skilled workers to save their own highly lucrative reputation and therefore their bumper profit margins.
Morrissey is absolutely correct to point out where blame should be properly attributed in this case; he is one of the few famous people who actually does come out and speak the truth about the disgusting Windsor family dictatorship rather than toadying up to them like 99% of celebrities do. And so it’s utterly unsurprising that all the scumbag careerist journos are yet again lining up to take potshots at him – for telling the truth, basically. The man is a hero.
Comrade Harpal speaking at the Chinese Academy of Social Science
Comrade Harpal Brar, Chair of the Communist Party, has returned to Britain after his recent trip to China. Comrade Harpal was invited by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (which encompasses the former Institute of Marxism Leninism, Mao-Zedong Thought) to address this years Third World Socialism Forum. Comrade Harpal was able to address the delegates on the contemporary struggle for socialism, the crisis of imperialism and a great many other questions. A full report will appear in the new year edition of Lalkar.
In the meantime, watch the video below featuring the CPGB-ML Honorary President Isabel Crook. Comrade Crook is a lifetime revolutionary, Marxist Leninist and fierce anti-revisionist. Isabel’s late husband David fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and both were loyal members of the CPGB during its revolutionary years. After the collapse of the old Party many comrades were left without a political home, but many like Jack Shapiro and Isabel were delighted to witness the reemergence and growth of a revolutionary Party in Britain. You can read a review of her famous book Ten Mile Inn written jointly with David in this months edition of Proletarian.
In early December the Greens held a meeting at the University of Manchester attended by Red Youth. The intention of the Green Party on this evening was to reach out to students, and to persuade them to join the Greens in a fight for a better future both environmentally and economically. What they didn’t tell you is that you have to be RED to be GREEN!
The evening began with a brief introduction from the leader of the Manchester Young Greens, introducing their deputy leader and MP for Dudley, Will Duckworth, and the newly elected party leader, Natalie Bennett.
As expected, the speaker’s comments were guided not by values of honesty and truth but by the typical opportunism of bourgeois politicians– say what the audience wants to hear. For the opening period, one may have even mistaken the Green Party for a socialist party (!), talking of abolishing tuition fees and giving everyone an opportunity at higher education, talking of the abolishment of poverty, talking of the need to tackle the agenda put forward by the coalition government, as well as Labour, and stressing the importance of renationalising the railways.
Behind the honeyed words that most left-wingers would agree with, there remains the fact that the Green Party is not that much different in outlook than the ‘old’ Labour Party of 20 to 30 years ago. The Green Party still adopts the system that has caused countless lives to be lost through poverty, neglect, war and oppression – namely capitalism. Just like the Labour Party of the past, they make endless promises to the masses; but the system upon which these promises rest is the very system of imperialism which gives a few crumbs to the workers in the imperialist countries whilst savagely looting the workers in the colonies. What the Green Party has not realised is that capitalism is in profound crisis and the ability of the system to hand down these crumbs is now over.
It is true that many of the policies spoken of, such as electoral reform, opposing the “oil-wars” and the abolishment of poverty, are the policies that we’d all like to see enacted. But these policies can never bring lasting social justice and can never be achieved for the majority of society, and sustained into the future, if we rely upon capitalist economics and private ownership of the means of production. It is for this reason that the Green Party should break its ties with social democracy, and instead should join the resistance against imperialism and unite with the working class and oppressed masses of the world – but don’t hold your breath! They claim to be the only viable alternative – but the rights that they seek to protect are not merely the rights of the planet, critically the Greens defend the right of private property – that is the right of individuals to own land and the natural resources which are bestowed upon individuals by mere flukes of birth or are captured, colonised stolen or forced from the hands of their indigenous people violently expropriated by capitalists, “developers” and “entrepreneurs”, as they run rampage across the planet, poisoning our soil, air and water in their pursuit of maximum profit!
After the meeting, I had a chance to have a few minutes with Will Duckworth. With time being pushed, I decided to opt for questioning him over the imperialist system and its never ending inherent rive for profit and war. He went on to say that war was not the answer, and that “selling arms and weapons to countries isn’t going to create any peace”. But after I elaborated, in the case that if it weren’t for Russian supplies to the Syrian government then the western imperialist predatory takeover may have already happened, he was unable to disagree. Ultimately its not weapons that are the problem, its in who’s hands these weapons are wielded! Based on his reaction, I would say that the Green Party is no different than a liberal-do-gooder party, saying things that they know the public will want to hear. The Greens are too afraid to stand against those real enemies of the people and the planet – the robber barons of finance capital!.
Sincerely, I hope that the Greens and many of their more progressive members make a decisive turn towards socialism, but with the fact that they still base their philosophy on the capitalist system– which is totally dependent on turning man into wage slaves – only reaffirms my conviction that the abolition of private property, the socialisation of the means of production and the taking into common ownership of the natural resources of our planet presents the only long-term sustainable future for our species and our planet!
Anyone with a fleeting interest in foreign affairs could be forgiven this week for experiencing déjà vu as the United States, without a trace of evidence, accused the Syrian government of preparing to use chemical weapons on its people. In rhetoric that echoed the false claims of Iraqi WMDs last decade, western leaders intensified their plans for military intervention by claiming Damascus has started “potential chemical weapon preparation”.
Barack Obama, speaking on 4 December, warned that “if you [Assad] make the tragic mistake of using these weapons there will be consequences and you will be held accountable”. The US President continued, without a hint of irony, that “we simply cannot allow the 21st century to be darkened by the worst weapons of the 20th century”. (‘Syria crisis: Obama warns Assad over chemical weapons’, BBC News, 4 November 2012). The United States, of course, has used chemical weapons on the civilian population of Iraq and continually turns a blind eye to the Israeli use of white phosphorus in Gaza.
On the same day, Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen approved the deployment of Patriot anti-missile batteries along the Syrian border in Turkey. These are, it is claimed, to shoot down Syrian missiles and/or warplanes which may be carrying chemical weapons.
Yet, whilst the majority of western media outlets have repeated these unsubstantiated claims, as they so faithfully did against Iraq in 2003, a Pentagon official has confirmed that “there is no evidence yet that the Syrian military has actually begun the process of mixing precursor chemicals to produce deadly Sarin nerve gas”. (‘No evidence Syria mixing chemical agents’, Pentagon official says, NBC News, 4 November 2012). Instead, we’re being asked to trust the intelligence agencies of US imperialism, who claim to have detected increased movement around ‘suspected weapons sites’.
It is the duty of communists, and all progressives, to ignore sensationalism and objectively analyse facts, history and class forces at play. The Syrian government has been able to withstand almost 22 months of foreign-backed insurgency – funded directly by US, British and French imperialists and indirectly by their proxies in Israel, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies. Indeed, the Syrian army has captured and identified a number of foreign nationals, originating from Saudi Arabia, Libya and even Britain, fighting in the country.
The government of Bashar al-Assad has survived not because of its possession of chemical weapons, nor out of fear as western commentators, and even socialists, foolishly assert, but because it retains the overwhelming support of the Syrian people: a population that has successfully resisted US imperialism and zionism for generations. If the imperialists attempt to manipulate events so that the FSA release chemical or biological weapons it will merely be a repeat of the strenuous efforts made whilst sending mortars into Turkey to embroil the entire region in a wider conflict, interfere with the internal situation in Syria and find a pretext for open imperialist interference.
The Syrian Arab Republic, contrary to its hysterical depiction, is a secular popular force in the region that has retained the progressive values of Arab nationalism and has, along with Iran and Hizbollah, been central to Palestinian resistance. It is for these reasons that Syria is being targeted by imperialism and its proxies – just as were Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – and not, as we are asked to believe, because the US, British or French imperialists care a jot about civilian lives.
A Red Youth and cpgb-ml candidate from Stafford gave his teacher a shock with this appraisal of Marxism which the class was asked to complete as an assignment!
Defending communism and the question of communism in the 21st Century
It is a popular trend amongst British society to slander and regurgitate various statements and “arguments” against Communism and its history. Undoubtedly, one of the most popular arguments that is regurgitate by the people, from the bourgeois press, is the argument: “Communism is outdated”. Little do they know, this is completely wrong and you can see it for yourself with just a little bit of Marxist-Leninist analysis.
The fundamental of Marxism-Leninism is class struggle. Class struggle is more than a belief though; it is a direct result of Capitalism and the massive inequality it breeds in every corner. The concept of class struggle is still totally relevant to 21st Century Britain. There is still workers and bosses, rich and poor, exploiters and exploited. The working classes and the upper classes still fight one another for their specific interests, although it may seem less physical right now, it is still represented through various political and social struggles on an almost monthly basis. Since all this is happening, the concept of Class struggle is still relevant to 21st Century Britain.
We have witnessed constant examples of class struggle throughout our lives living in the 21st Century. We have witnessed the public spending cuts, leaving thousands, if not millions of working class people unemployed and left on the brink of poverty. We have witnessed their struggle to protect what little wealth they own. While this was and still is happening, the capitalists were sitting in their luxury houses, with their firm control over 90% of Britain’s wealth, earned through the blood of imperialism and the exploitation of the working classes of Britain.
People will also argue that Marxism-Leninism has lost it’s relevance because of the improvement of living standards in the past 100 years. They say because public services such as education have been made free, opportunity of success has risen and now anyone can go from “rags to riches”. But this simply isn’t true. Statistics have shown that only 4% of Britain’s upper classes have gone from “rags to riches”. Meaning the other 96% of the upper class have basically had some form of help in order to attain their wealthy status. Meaning the poor working classes have little chance of ever becoming wealthy millionaires. Not to mention that further education still requires us to pay ludicrous amounts of money just to gain a qualification. So services like education technically are still not fully provided for. Meaning Marxism-Leninism is still needed to provide our working classes with much needed opportunity.
Another fundamental teaching of Marxism-Leninism concerns imperialism. Imperialism is just as relevant now as it was 100 years ago. We see the constant effects of NATO backed invasions, specifically in the middle-east, in which nations are invaded and plundered by the multi-national capitalist monopolies. Iraq and Afghanistan have both fell victims of imperialism. Invaded and then plundered by various monopolies, expanding their empire of capital even further. Imperialism for profit, at the expense of potentially millions of innocent lives.
We have also witnessed many examples of imperialism across the globe and the destruction and suffering it creates. We have seen the invasion of Iraq, supposedly in the name of “freedom” and finding “weapons of mass-destruction”. The invasion has brought nothing to the Iraqi people but suffering, extreme poverty, violence and death. Thousands of Iraqis have died and millions of Iraqis lives have been destroyed, all because of the NATO invasion. While this has happened, conveniently, many monopolies have shown up not long after in Iraq. Companies like KBR, making $8 billion from both oil and private security. Or Dyncorp, making $50 million from providing “law enforcement” for the Iraqi people.
It’s time for the people of Britain to face the truth, Capitalism must go! It has exploited and caused enough pain, suffering, war and death! We must not fall for the bourgeoisie’s lies, instead we must develop class consciousness once more! We must use Marxism-Leninism, still as relevant as 100 years ago, as our weapon for liberation!
